So that's even more heavily subsidized, doesn't change how far from profitable it is since financial profit and actual profit aren't very strongly correlated
Discussion
At 5c per kW the daily cost is $0.072, roughly equal to power price. If you had idle computing capacity it makes sense
Seems like you ignored what I just said, but also added ignoring that "roughly equal" doesn't mean financially profitable (which I now have to repeat also in turn doesn't mean actually profitable)
?
You said that at the best case you were 5 times higher cost than it being profitable.
I stated that actual electrical wholesaler prices are regularly below 5c per kWh. In actually practice they are often negative for a large part of the day where I live due to solar feed in.
By financially profitable not being the same as actual profit I assume that means the cost of capital and maintenance? Which is why I said that it could make sense for idle computing capacity.
I don't know what you mean by subsidised? This is wholesale prices.
What I am saying is that the returns are close to the marginal cost of production.
I was saying, across the devices I can mine on, my best energy efficiency is 5 times worse than profitable at my local level of energy subsidy.
Low/negative energy costs aren't a product of a rational market with today's technology, and our markets are controlled by the authorities, so you can consider irrational pricing "subsidized."
In a long-running rational market, we might have low or negative energy prices today due to different technology, but if the energy market suddenly turned rational today, prices everywhere would be higher than Maine, until the higher prices cause infrastructure to develop more.
Financial profit turns into actual profit if you use it to make a profit, but it isn't actual profit on its own. The subsidy might be paid for in non-financial ways like your health
The subsidies are also financially expensive, obviously, so what seems like financial profit isn't usually even financial profit, let alone real profit (this applies in general across most industries in today's economy)
My point was basically: to be 5x from profit at Maine's subsidy shows you have to be insanely subsidized and somehow avoid paying money for the subsidies to make a financial profit, and utilize the financial profit in ways that outweigh the other costs to make it a real profit